


I Don't Belong Anywhere

by mdr_24601



Series: you're not alone at the table anymore [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sparrow Academy (Umbrella Academy), Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy has PTSD, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Post-Season/Series 02, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26979799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdr_24601/pseuds/mdr_24601
Summary: When they returned from the sixties to find the timeline mostly intact, the relief was palpable. Everyone was glad to be back home, and Five?Well, at this point, he didn’t even know what home was, much less if he’d succeeded in finding it.(He does find it. Eventually.)
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: you're not alone at the table anymore [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958572
Comments: 10
Kudos: 174





	I Don't Belong Anywhere

Five scribbled again at the equations on his walls, chalk smudging on his fingers. They had been legible once, but had long since been reduced to scribbles, lines and shapes that made considerably less sense than the day he wrote them. Things that had made sense before, words or phrases or numbers he’d scrawled on any excess space he could find, had been stripped of any meaning or value until it all blended into one giant white mess on his wall. 

A knock at the door startled him and he dropped his chalk. “What?” he snapped irritably. Turning around, he saw Allison’s face, soft with sympathy, and felt a little bad for snapping. 

“We’re having a family dinner,” she said. “You should come down.”

Five almost declined instinctively before remembering that Allison had a daughter. Well, that explained her sudden desperation to play house. “No, thanks,” he said after a moment. “I’m busy.”

Allison frowned. “Doing what? Scribbling on your walls? Come on, Five, you’ve been locked up in here ever since we got home. We want to see you.”

 _Home._ There was that word again. It fell from his siblings’ lips easily when the briefcase deposited them back in 2019, relieved shouts of _we’re finally home!_ Good for them, at least. His siblings had a home in this city, in this timeline, even if he didn’t. 

And really, wasn’t that his goal all along? To get back to his family, save the world, and get back home? Everything he did, he did to get back home, to save his siblings. He had grown up here, in this house, with its tiled floors and dark hallways, high ceilings and large wooden furniture. But was it home, really?

Strictly speaking, Five had spent most of his life in the apocalypse. While it was laughable to consider the barren wasteland his home, he grew up there, lived there for over forty years. It was perhaps the closest thing to a home he had.

But what other options were there? Certainly not the Commission, and the Academy always felt more like a military camp or a school than a home. 

“Five?"

Allison’s voice brought him back to the present. What was she saying? Something about dinner with his siblings. 

“Are you coming down or not? Because I’m pretty sure Mom made pot pie and that was always your favorite, so—”

“I’ll come down if I have time,” he said, turning back to his equations. Which really translated to _I won’t be coming down,_ and Allison seemed to know that. 

“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay, well, we’ll bring some up for you later, if you want. I know it’s only been a few days, but we’re all here if you want to talk.”

Five turned to face her one last time. “If I ever feel the need to expose my deepest vulnerabilities to you all, Allison, you’ll be the first to know. Does that satisfy you?”

The words were biting and sarcastic but something in her expression softened. “Yes,” she said, a hint of satisfaction creeping into her voice. “It does.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door behind her with a gentle click. Any further noise was tuned out as his eyes scanned his equations. Some of them he had written in the week leading up to the first apocalypse. It had been two weeks ago, at least for him, but it felt like some distant dream all the same. Was it really two weeks ago that he was hyper fixated on some prosthetic eye?

He sighed and massaged his temples, trying to settle the headache that had been building there. His eyes had gone blurry some time ago, perhaps from strain. The numbers on his walls blurred into one illegible mass of writing. 

It was safe to assume he wasn’t going to be getting any work done for a while. 

Five leaned back on his bed and let his mind wander. When they returned from the sixties to find the timeline mostly intact, the relief was palpable. Everyone was glad to be back home, and Five?

Well, at this point, he didn’t even know what home was, much less if he’d succeeded in finding it. 

He felt ill at ease in his childhood bedroom, like a shrine to the child he was before he left. Being in his teenage body certainly didn’t help matters. It was jarring to glance into the mirror to see his young face reflected back at him, looking both exactly and nothing like him. He had taken to showering in the dark just to avoid the sight of it. He felt out of place no matter where he was, uncomfortable all the time, recoiling at the slightest brush of human contact. 

So. He didn’t fit in his own house, in his own skin, or with his own family. 

In some ways, he missed the apocalypse. It was hellish, particularly in the winter months or before all the ash had been expelled from the air, but at least he knew what he was doing. Survive another day, long enough to get home. That was his mission. 

Well, that was his mission until it wasn’t. 

Some commotion sounded downstairs, a crash then childish laughter. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but that didn’t matter. They sounded happy, for a moment. 

For them, the end of the world was a past concern; a problem that had been dealt with and shelved away until they could forget about it. 

For Five, though? Well, some days he felt like he had never left the apocalypse at all. Some days, he was certain the stench of ash and charred corpses followed him wherever he went. 

* * *

Five’s favorite time to exist in the house was during the night, when the halls were dark and silent, almost pleasant in their emptiness. He hadn’t been back in 2019 for long, only a few days, a week at most. That wasn’t enough time to have settled into a routine, and for his siblings, routine seemed to be a foreign concept. 

No matter. At least they could agree on one thing: the nights were for sleeping. 

He knew, realistically, that he should be sleeping right now. That was what everyone else was doing, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t get the images out of his head, or the words out of his ears. 

_You belong here, with us._

The Handler’s sickly sweet voice infiltrated his ears and he shuddered. The apocalypse had hardened him but the Commission had shattered him and filled the cracks with something foreign, something that didn’t belong to him, until he was unrecognizable. Or maybe he was finally seeing what he really was. 

_You were always a killer._

No, no, that couldn’t be it. He was a killer because he had to be for his family. Any of them would’ve done the same thing. Wouldn’t they? Well, maybe not Ben. His heart clenched. 

_I just pointed you in a direction._

Was that really all it took? One little nudge, and he was their perfect little assassin? Maybe that was how it happened, he didn’t know. Eventually, every day, every assignment, every kill all blended together until he couldn’t differentiate one day from the next. The details were a little blurry around the edges, anyway.

Five climbed out of bed and pulled the fabric of space apart to land in the deserted kitchen. Spatial jumps were easy. Space molded at his touch until he could pull it any way he wanted, malleable and inviting. Time was the opposite; difficult and stubborn and oftentimes, horribly inaccurate. 

Something shuffled behind him and he grabbed a knife and spun around. The lights flickered on and Vanya’s face came into view. 

“Hey,” she said softly. “Sorry, it’s just me. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” he replied stiffly, setting the knife down on the table. He had been making a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, a food that rarely failed to soothe his nerves.

He hadn’t taken a good look at Vanya since the sixties. She still wore the same unsure expression, a crease between her brow and her lips pulled downward, but there was a subtle difference in the way she carried herself. Her shoulders looked more relaxed, lighter. It looked good on her.

“What are you doing up?” he found himself asking. No matter how much he tried to avoid interaction, it was different with Vanya. It always had been, from the time they were kids. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Vanya murmured. “You?”

“Same.”

She stood next to him at the counter, making her own sandwich. Her shoulder brushed his and his muscles tensed. “I always used to make these after you left,” she said. “So you knew you were welcome back. I did it even after I moved out, whenever I got nervous.”

Something stirred inside of him. Maybe it was the fact that Vanya missed him, or that she made the sandwiches well into adulthood. “Vanya, I’m—” the words got stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry for leaving. I didn’t mean, well, obviously I didn’t mean to get stuck in the apocalypse, but I didn’t mean any of it.”

Her gaze softened. “It’s okay. None of us blame you, you know that, right?”

“Well,” he averted his eyes, “maybe you should.”

“What?” Vanya asked. “Five, you saved us more times than we can count! We should be thanking you.”

“You wouldn’t have needed saving if it weren’t for me,” he countered, something warm and fiery burning in his chest. 

“I’m the one who blew up the moon. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have spent your entire adult life in an apocalyptic wasteland!”

They were being loud but Five couldn’t bring himself to care. It wasn’t like they were getting anywhere playing the blame game, even if there was something cathartic about it. “How ‘bout we just call it even, yeah?”

Vanya smiled a little. “Sure. Do you want any coffee?”

Five grinned back. “As long as Klaus didn’t make it.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” She set two steaming mugs of coffee on the table. “Allison doesn’t let him anywhere near the coffeemaker since he made some that tasted like battery acid.”

“He did that?” Five asked, his brow furrowed. He couldn’t recall the event.

“Yeah, when we first got back,” she replied with a small laugh into her coffee. “It was kind of funny, actually.”

He hummed in acknowledgement before taking a sip of his coffee. The flavors settled on his tongue and he sighed. Vanya made good coffee. He hadn’t always been so fixated on the taste, but once he figured out that his powers were aided significantly by caffeine, he developed a taste for the stuff. 

The caffeine settled into his blood and buzzed under his skin, and time sped by after that. He and Vanya spent hours sitting at the table, talking. He wasn’t aware that it was morning until Luther stumbled down the stairs, always the early riser. Five guessed that his internal clock was still set to the ancient schedule of the Academy. 

“Morning,” he mumbled as he greeted them at the table. “You’re up early. Did you even sleep at all, Five?”

“Irrelevant,” he said as he rinsed his coffee cup out at the sink. He sent Vanya a quick smile before disappearing into his bedroom with a flash of blue. 

His covers were still pulled back from the night before. Black spots clouded his vision and he gripped his chair to keep from falling. The equations on the wall caught his eyes, and he recalled the hours that he spent urgently writing them; the days that sped by like minutes when there was still so much left to do. 

He looked at the equations and he went to bed. 

* * *

“Five!” Someone pounded on his door. The voice was coupled with an insistent whine. Definitely Klaus, then. “Get out here! We’re having a movie night!”

“If I come out, will you stop that incessant pounding?” he called through the door. The pounding ceased, and Klaus opened the door dramatically

“Come on,” he said, grabbing him by the wrist and sending a shock wave up Five’s arm. He wrenched his arm away as Klaus led him into the hallway. “We’re all waiting for you downstairs.”

“Well, you can tell them that they can stop waiting,” Five said. Klaus’ lips tugged into a frown. 

“You said you would come down.”

“No,” he corrected shortly. “I said I would leave my room, which I’ve done.”

Another set of footsteps followed up the stairs, accompanied by another voice. “Five?” He cursed under his breath. It was Vanya. Saying no to Klaus was old news, but saying no to Vanya felt like a punch to the gut. “Come on, just give it a try. If you don’t like it after twenty minutes, you can leave, okay?”

“Fine,” Five muttered, and followed them downstairs. As expected, Luther, Diego, and Allison were seated in the living room among blankets and pillows and multiple bowls of popcorn. 

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Allison said with a sunny smile. “Are we ready?”

“Wait,” Klaus said, and retreated to the kitchen. Moments later, he came back with a bag of marshmallows and sent him a wink. 

“Seriously?” Diego asked. 

“Yes, seriously,” Klaus said. “Marshmallows are an essential movie watching snack, Diego, you should know this.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

“Okay, okay,” Allison said, although she was smiling. “I’m pressing play now.”

The movie was some rom-com that he was pretty sure Luther was only watching because it had Allison in it, but Five didn’t pay much attention to the movie. His siblings were spread out in the living room, draped across chairs or couches, always touching. Even as kids, they had always been tactile with each other. He had never been a fan of all the touching they did, but his years in the apocalypse and with the Commission only made it worse. 

It was hard to engage in physical contact when every touch brought back memories of the Handler caressing his arm, her nails digging into his skin. Or his hands accidentally brushing a dead body as he scavenged for food. 

There was something off-limits about touch for him, even if he was alone in the rule. 

Allison’s fingers deftly braided Vanya’s hair, Luther and Diego’s hands each wrestled for the popcorn, and Klaus’ arm was slung over Vanya’s shoulder. Five’s back was pressed against Diego's knees, and he had to stop himself from recoiling away. 

The movie played on but he didn’t really notice. Eventually, it ended, the popcorn bowls were put away, but nobody went upstairs. Instead, they gathered all the blankets they could find and laid them out on the floor for people to lay on. Five got one of the couches, Allison and Vanya were curled up on another one, Klaus was huddled in an armchair, and Luther and Diego laid sprawled out on the floor. 

The sun set and the room grew dark as their breathing evened. He smiled softly to himself, because right in front of him was living, breathing proof that they were alive, not charred corpses or buried beneath rubble or crumpled on the ground after a gunshot. Just steady breathing and relaxed expressions. 

Two weeks ago, Five would not have been able to identify what, or where, his home was. Now, the details were still unclear, but at least he had a vague idea. 

He looked around the room at the sleeping forms of his family. If nothing else, at least he belonged in this moment, with his siblings scattered across the living room. 

Five fell asleep to the sounds of their gentle breathing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was at least marginally better. For the first time in forty-five years, he went to sleep feeling comfortable with his surroundings.

**Author's Note:**

> So, here's another addition to the series. I've been wanting to write about Five for a while, but I was never sure how to go about it. I hope I captured his voice okay. 
> 
> Be sure to leave kudos or comment if you enjoyed, thank you for reading! <3


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